Two bills introduced in the 2026 Maryland General Assembly, House Bill 1043 and House Bill 1528, are offering hope to homeschoolers throughout the state who want to participate in extracurricular activities. House Bill 1528 provides homeschool students with the opportunity to participate in extracurricular activities offered at public schools with approval from their local school system. House Bill 1043, “Right to Play,” specifically addresses high school athletics and will allow homeschooled high school students the opportunity to participate in public school athletic programs.
Approximately 30 states in this country allow homeschooled students to participate in public school athletics under what are commonly referred to as “Tim Tebow laws.” Awarded the Heisman Trophy in 2007, Tim Tebow’s success was groundbreaking on two counts: as a sophomore, he was the first underclassman ever to receive this award; moreover, he was homeschooled from kindergarten through high school and played football at a local high school under a Florida statute allowing this. States such as Alaska, Colorado, Ohio, and Pennsylvania offer free access to homeschoolers. Other states, such as Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and North Dakota, allow homeschoolers to participate with the approval of the local district. Still others, such as Idaho, Illinois, and Washington, require homeschooled students to be enrolled on a part-time basis to access public school athletics. Students in these states enjoy the many benefits of participating in high school athletics, including easier access to opportunities for college athletic scholarships.
However, Maryland is one of several states where homeschoolers are not permitted to participate in public high school athletics. In Maryland, homeschooled student-athletes have limited options and must choose from fee-based private organizations such as the Boys and Girls Club and other community-based sports teams, or find private schools willing to accept homeschoolers in their athletic programs. For a number of years, my children played sports through a community team sponsored by Mt. Oak Church. The Mt. Oak Saints were part of the Greater Metropolitan Christian Athletic Conference (GMCAC), a collective of approximately 15 private Christian schools offering recreational, yet competitive, tournaments in soccer, basketball, volleyball, and flag football. GMCAC was an integral part of the homeschool athletic experience in our community until the pandemic hit, and sports programs throughout the nation were forced to shut down. While some programs emerged from that period intact, others, such as GMCAC, struggled and never fully recovered. Still others never reopened, limiting the availability of quality athletics programs.
Currently, community athletic groups vary widely in terms of available sports and level of competitiveness. In the Washington, DC, Metropolitan area, organizations such as the Laurel Boys and Girls Club offer spring cheer, flag football, and soccer for elementary and middle school children. The Prince George’s County Boys and Girls Club offers basketball, soccer, football, baseball, kickball, track and field, and cheerleading to elementary and middle school students. Similarly, DMV Marksman Soccer has a co-ed program for elementary and middle school students.
The challenge, however, is that many of these private programs end at middle school. Moreover, most of these programs compete at a recreational level and have limited offerings. While DMV Marksman does offer competitive travel teams, they are only open to middle school students. The Savage Boys and Girls Club offers highly competitive high school travel teams, but only for softball and baseball. Finding a wide range of highly competitive athletic teams outside of the public school system is difficult because so few exist, and those that do, can be costly. My neighbor’s daughter played on a travel softball team, and he spent thousands of dollars funding her participation during her high school years. Thankfully, she was scouted while on that team and landed a partial athletic scholarship. While homeschoolers all over the country are scouted and do earn college athletic scholarships, that road often proves difficult and costly to families.
The hope of the two bills currently sitting in the Maryland chambers, and particularly House Bill 1043, is to provide access to high school sports for homeschoolers, offering a navigable pathway to competitive athletics for families who educate outside of the traditional setting.
Homeschooling and unconventional learning have never been about opting out. Rather, they have always been about choosing something better for our students. For countless Maryland homeschooling families, these two bills represent an acknowledgment that making the choice to educate outside of the traditional setting should not mean closing doors of opportunity, especially athletic opportunity. Whether you are a homeschool parent, an educational entrepreneur reimagining what school can look like, or simply someone who believes in expanding opportunity, this moment in Maryland, along with similar moments unfolding in other states, matters. Here in Maryland, homeschoolers showed up en masse to testify in the Maryland chambers on behalf of this bill. Our hope is that the legislators listened, and this will be the year that Maryland homeschoolers earn the right to play.
